Second drone strike in 12 hours

PESHAWAR: Two US drone attacks in 12 hours in North Waziristan killed at least 16 people. AFP quoted officials as saying that those killed were militants while their hideouts, including a Taliban fortress, were destroyed.

Sources said that 13 people were killed when a US unmanned drone fired two missiles into a compound in Mayazaar village of Dattakhel tehsil in North Waziristan Agency on Friday.

The village is 25 kilometres from agency headquarters Miranshah and close to the Afghan border. Recently, most of the attacks have taken place in Dattakhel tehsil.

While it is being claimed that both attacks targeted militant compounds, the identity of the dead, the networks to which they may have been affiliated and whether there were any high-value targets was not immediately clear.

The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

“US drones fired three missiles at a house used by militants around 7:30 am,” said a senior security official in Peshawar.

“Eleven militants were killed,” the official told AFP of Friday’s strike, revising an initial toll of three dead. Other sources, however, claim that 13 people died.

Security officials in Miranshah said seven other militants were injured and that three of the 11 dead were “foreigners”.

In the Thursday attack, officials said three militants were killed, two of whom were reportedly foreigners.

More than 900 people have been killed in nearly 100 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008.

On June 1, al Qaeda said its number three leader and Osama bin Laden’s one-time treasurer Mustafa Abu al Yazid had been killed, in what security officials said was an apparent drone strike in North Waziristan.

Waziristan came under renewed scrutiny when Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged over an attempted bombing in New York on May 1, allegedly told US interrogators he went there for bomb training.

The US has been putting increasing pressure on Pakistan to crack down on militant hideouts along the Afghan border.

Pakistani commanders have not ruled out an offensive in North Waziristan, but argue that gains in South Waziristan and the northwestern district of Swat need to be consolidated to prevent their troops from being stretched too thin.

The drone attacks have increased during the Barak Obama administration. Last week, a UN human rights expert warned that the “prolific” use of US drone attacks amounted to “a licence to kill without accountability” and was setting a damaging example that other countries would follow.

In a report to the UN Human Rights Council, Philip Alston sharply criticised the legal arguments used to justify them, their civilian toll and the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2010.